Sover Scene
I thought we’d come to the wrong theater. Upon taking our seats for an evening of Shakespearean comedy one night a couple of months ago, my 8-year-old daughter whispered, “The stage is a mess!” It was a modern mess, at that, which also didn’t make sense as “Twelfth Night” was written more than 400 years ago.
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From April 25 to April 27, the first Poets and Writers Weekend will take place in various locations throughout Manchester and the impressive agenda is vibrant and varied.
Though this year’s focus is The Emerging Writer, authors of every rank and genre — established novelists, young poets and mid-career journalists alike — will find professional succor and creative sanctuary in the weekend’s well-rounded roster of celebrated scholars, esteemed authors, self-publishing entrepreneurs and organizational leaders in the literary arts.
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Vermont is home to a constellation of intriguing creative institutions filled with far more than just fine art.
The top of my unconventional museums list, however — the mother of all treasure troves — is the Fairbanks Museum in St. Johnsbury. Vermont’s much-celebrated field-trip favorite boasts more than 160,000 natural science, historical and cultural objects that 19th-century industrialist Franklin Fairbanks collected during extensive travels around the globe.
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These are a few of the terms with which Irish painter Sean Scully recently described his massive, layered abstractions during a talk at Dartmouth a few days after an expansive exhibition of his work opened at the Hood Museum.
Unlike many artists who prefer to let the work speak for itself or for whom the very notion of attempting to articulate its meaning with language is antithetical to the process, Scully sinks his intellectual teeth into discussion of his art with the same might and hunger that he puts into the making of it.
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January 24, 2008
By ANNE LAWRENCE GUYON
“A dance is a measured pace, as a verse is a measured speech.”
I was about 5 minutes into watching a sparsely eloquent piece being performed by eight members of Cherylyn Lavagnino Dance when this line by Francis Bacon came to mind.
Two couples in casual clothing moved methodically through a simply lit performance space, intersecting and parting, hoisting, shoving, cradling and spinning each other, sometimes splitting into protective pairs or solemn solitary figures, then merging again to resume what evolved into a mesmerizing physical dialogue.
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Local Scene

A whopping 25 acts coming from locales ranging from Montreal to Florida will perform at the Vermont Rally, an American Motorcyclist Association sanctioned event that will take place at the Vermont State Fairgrounds in Rutland from June 6-8.
Between now and then catch the Vegas Brothers at Sidelines Saturday and the benevit for the Westcott family at Uncle Sam’s Pub on State Street Sunday.
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Barre - It’s an unseasonably warm evening, and many of the regulars, their wine bottles uncorked, have been hunkered down in their folding chairs for quite some time. It’s BYOB at the taping of New England Cooks at its 386 North Main St. studio in Barre. Think of the wine as a lubricant for laughter, not that it’s needed.
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Wallingford - The untimely death of (Chef) Beat (Bee-aht) Schonbachler shook up circles upon circles of people all the way from Switzerland to Wallingford and Rutland to New York and, well, the world. It’s not that Beat was a self-important person who inflicted himself on others — far from it. He was so entirely unassuming and warm and genuinely interested in others that people loved him from the first time they laid eyes on him, and they passed him from one circle to another as though he were a gift.
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Montpelier - First culinary job: “Peeling shrimp all day in a restaurant in Cleveland, after hiking the Appalachian Trail for four months. On the trail I figured out that what I really wanted to do was cook, and I figured I better get a job to be sure. The chef gave me this job to test my mettle.” Favorite local ingredient: “When I was a student we foraged for mushrooms. We’d go out and find morels and chanterelles. We’d bring a cassette burner and some whole butter, find a patch of mushrooms, wash them in the stream right there and cook them. … Eating the ingredients in the place where they came from was an enlightening experience. I had no idea about ingredients that fresh.”
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In another month or so, coffee and tea lovers can drop in at Café Terra and sip their favorite brewed beverage while painting a coffee mug or other pieces of ceramic pottery. The coffee shop at 67 Center St., is an extension of the adjacent Hands-On Minds-On, the children’s art studio that Hogan started three years ago. Located in the former Teacher’s Closet, Hogan calls her new venture an artistic café with a coffee bar and tables that seat 40. The wood-framed glass case will contain ceramic pieces that can be purchased and then painted while enjoying a cup of coffee, espresso, latte or tea.
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